


Battle, A Different Kind

by tielan



Category: Mulan (1998)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Post-Movie, Vignette, yuletide 2007 treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulan girds herself for a different kind of battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battle, A Different Kind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SteelNeko in the 2007 Yuletide Madness.

The blue silk dress with the embroidered sash lies on the bed, disdained, as Mulan draws the line at the facepaint, pushing her mother’s hand away. “No. Not the facepaint.”

Her hair has been piled on her head, carefully fixed and pinned, she is in the process of arguing against the dress, and will not put on the powder and paint. The echoes of the last time she was done up so nicely linger in her memory.

 _You may look like a bride, but you will never bring your family honour!_

Her mother makes a tutting noise in her mouth. “I do not understand you, Fa Mulan. You come home with a man that would make the Matchmaker take back every sneer and can barely be bothered to put on a dress!” One pale, elegant finger lingers at her cheek. “You have grown so dark--”

“I was out in the sun every day,” Mulan reminds her, frankly. “No parasols in the army.” She stares at herself in the mirror, at the tanned complexion she gained while masquerading as a man, a burnished contrast to the paleness of the cotton robe she presently wears.

The girl in the mirror looks back at her, brown as a peasant, with none of the pale delicacy appropriate to a demi-noble young woman. Even her features are harsh, too stark for a girl, not quite tough enough for a man. And yet, Fa Ping was accepted among his comrades for his actions - bravery, courage, strength.

Bravery, courage, and strength were appropriate for Fa Ping as a soldier in the Chinese Army.

For Fa Mulan, beauty, delicacy, and elegance are the epitome of a lady - and Mulan has never been particularly ladylike.

“Mulan--”

“The Captain has seen me without any of this,” she says, waving one hand at the hair, the clothing, and the pot of paint that her mother still holds. “I don’t see why I need it now.”

“You need it now because it is time that he saw you _with_ it,” says Grandmother as she stumps forward to frame Mulan in the mirror. They stand there, reflected mother, daughter, and grandmother.

Mulan frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Mulan...” her mother begins to smooth out her brow, but Mulan pulls away, turning to look at Grandmother Fa’s wizened face and the sharp, dark eyes that study her by the lamplight.

“He’s used to seeing you as a man, not a woman,” says her grandmother frankly. “But what Captain Shang saw of Fa Mulan intrigued him enough that he is out there drinking your father’s best ricewine and listening to your father’s old war stories with a very good show of awe.”

“It’s not a show,” Mulan says, remembering the Captain’s words upon realising who his newest recruit’s father was: _Fa Zhou? The Fa Zhou?_

“Well, he followed Fa Mulan home - to deliver a helmet? No. He is here, and now you have to keep him.”

Mulan frowns at the description. “Like a pet?” Then she winces as he grandmother rapped her sharply on the shoulder.

“You must keep him interested. Perhaps not as other ladies might - but you are not other ladies.”

“Grandmother.” Her mother finally finds voice to interrupt, outraged. “This is not the way such things are done!”

“Perhaps not usually, Li,” says Grandmother sharply. “But my granddaughter has faced the Hun army and done what the finest of Chinese generals could not. Mulan does not do things the way they should be done - and perhaps that is as well. Ancestors know we have tried to make her into what she should be and failed - remember the Matchmaker?”

“But you said that I should dress up for him!”

“You should. Simply show him that you are a woman as well as a man.”

“What if I don’t want to be his woman?”

“Would you rather be his man?”

“Grandmother!” Mother is horrified.

Mulan goes scarlet. She knows to what Grandmother refers - it was no secret in the army, although the men never spoke openly of it. But the buggering habits of men do not concern her.

“I want to be _me_ ,” she says with more anger than she intends. “I don’t want to be someone’s wife, or the lady of a house, or...or even Fa Ping - not if I have to be someone else all my life!”

“No woman is ever allowed to be herself,” her mother says with the bitter experience of life and living. “Not for long. You learn to steal moments from the demands made on you. But it is never enough. Only men are free to be themselves.”

Mulan’s gaze finds the face in the mirror - the girl who is her and yet is not. Reflection and reality, the one a dark shadow of the other. “So this is the rest of my life?”

Grandmother snorts. “Pah! You fill the girl’s head with foolishness, Li. She is a hero of China - and has another hero of China sitting with her father wondering what’s taking her so long to get ready! Don’t you think your Captain knows your worth?”

“Yes, but--”

“No buts! A man who knows your worth and values it will give the woman he loves as much freedom as any woman can hope to expect.”

“Do I have to marry him?”

Her mother huffs. “Marriage is an honourable--”

“Li, you chatter like an old woman.”

“I am an old woman!” She sets down the pot of paint with a thump, and Mulan gently nudges it away with her fingertips as Grandmother sniffs.

“Not as old as I am, and I’m the one chattering here! Mulan! Your choices in marriage are better than those without. You do not _have_ to marry, but a woman in marriage has respect and a position assured for her. Perhaps there will come a day when a woman need not marry to be respected--”

“Grandmother!”

“But that day is not yet. So I would suggest you take what is offered to you in your handsome Captain and use it to the best of your abilities.” The dark eyes twinkle as she leans in to Mulan. “I can think of a few uses for him. Hubba-hubba!”

Mulan chokes back a gurgle. Her mother still looks horrified, but her grandmother is grinning so broadly that it’s impossible not to be amused. If she is honest with herself, she can think of a few uses for Li Shang as well - an education gained from living among men in the army camp.

A servant scratches at the panelling. “Lady Li, Fa Zhou asks for your presence and the presence of your daughter.”

The phrasing catches Mulan’s attention. Her father _asks_ for their presences - a nicety that need not be observed. She has been fortunate in her father’s regard, allowed more freedom to be who she wished than many other girls in the village.

That cannot last forever. She could save her father from conscription in the war, but she cannot save him from death.

“All right,” she says. “I won’t have the facepaint, but I will wear the blue dress.”

As her mother fusses and flutters around her, relieved at her capitulation, Mulan reflects.

Fa Ping liked Shang as a commander - hard on himself, yet fair to others. By contrast, Fa Mulan saw a man who struggled with his responsibilities and his expectations.

She remembers the demands he made of himself and of others in the camp - harsh, yes, but no less than was needed to bring them into shape. She remembers the taunts and insults he used to spur them on when their efforts flagged and the unstinting praise he gave when the less-than-stellar troops began to prove themselves. She remembers his expression, bewildered and stricken as they looked at the burned-out ruins of the village, and the convulsive grief as Chien-Po handed him his father’s helmet.

Fa Ping respected the soldier. Fa Mulan likes the man.

In quiet admittance to herself, Mulan knows Shang is both a prize himself and a means to an end for Mulan - the freedom to be herself as much as she is able to. If any man can see her for who she is, appreciate it, and allow her to be herself, Li Shang can.

And isn’t this just another kind of battle?

Mulan defeated Shan-Yu with tactics and opportunity. What she has here in Shang is another sort of opportunity - she only needs the tactics to win this war.

Her mother steps back, still fussing, but her grandmother watches, and a crinkled smile glitters in the beady black eyes.

This time, when Mulan looks at the dark face of the young woman in the mirror, she sees herself as she wishes to be - Fa Mulan, neither more nor less.

Then she girds her loins for battle of a different sort and steps out into the fray.


End file.
